CONFEREES MOVING CLOSER TO ACCORD ON NEW TAX BILL

A House-Senate conference committee moved close late tonight to completing approval of a $98.9 billion tax bill, leaving only four issues unresolved. Those included both a proposed increase in the cigarette tax and an extension of unemployment benefits.

Earlier, in an all-night session that ended at 8:45 this morning, the committee agreed to preserve a feature of the tax code that allows businesses to deduct the cost of certain meals. The conferees also agreed to a more stringent reporting system for restaurant workers' tips and a limit on deductions for medical costs that are claimed by millions of Americans.

The conferees planned to put the finishing touches on the final agreement tonight, but the bill faces an uncertain future in the House and Senate.

Rapid Progress Made

Early this evening, the committee made rapid progress in solving many of the tough issues it had postponed to the end of its deliberations. Among them were a rejection of the Senate proposal to reduce the holding period for capital gains tax treatment to six months and a two-year extension for tax credits for hiring hard-toemploy workers, such as minority youths.

The committee also voted to reduce benefits to corporations that use certain tax breaks, effectively raising taxes for these companies. And the panel threw out a Senate effort to exempt certain specific foundations from a 1969 law that would have required them to reduce their holdings in businesses to no more than 20 percent. The panel also approved the continuation of a plan for tax benefits for reinvesting utility dividends.

Besides the cigarette tax and the extension of unemployment benefits, the other two unresolved issues involved taxes on companies operating in Puerto Rico and tax leasing. On the Puerto Rican issue, the two sides moved close to a compromise that would reduce tax benefits to companies operating there, but by less than the Senate had voted. Tax leasing, which involves the sale of unused tax credits by one company to another, appeared to remain the biggest remaining problem. Timetable for Bill

The committee's aim is to send the bill to the House early next week, since Congress is scheduled to adjourn for a vacation break on Thursday.

Lining up votes for the bill, however, appeared to be moving as slowly as the conference committee deliberations. While the Administration continues to apply pressure to Republicans in Congress to win their support, and President Reagan has scheduled an address on the subject on Monday night, committee members predict that it will be an uphill battle.

''It will pretty much depend on the attitude of each member as he comes in next week,'' said Representative Dan Rostenkowski, the Illinois Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. ''That is how volatile this thing is. I don't see the enthusiasm for soliciting the vote on the floor, so it is going to have to be a personal thing for the President.'' 'I Built the Bridge'

Representative Rostenkowski, however, pledged his personal support, as did several other conferees. ''I'm like Colonel Bogey,'' he said in an allusion to the movie ''The Bridge on the River Kwai.''

''I built the bridge and I'm going to the Americans and the Japanese,'' the tired Congressman declared this morning. The conferees attribute the slow pace of the negotiations, which opened Aug. 3, to the fact that they are in the highly unusual situation of dealing mainly with proposals from the Senate, with no House provisions to balance against them. Moreover, because the House decided not to prepare its own tax-raising bill in this election year, House conferees had not studied the issues or reached a consensus before the conference began.

At a break Friday night while House conferees waited for the Senate members to return from a caucus, Representative Barber B. Conable Jr., Republican of upstate New York, called the seemingly unending process ''an exercise in unlimited masochism.''

By 2:30 this morning, the committee members had agreed on roughly 80 of the 101 tax provisions in the Senate bill. They were $600 million below the revenue raised by comparable items in the Senate's tax bill, but that bill had raised about $600 million more in revenues than the goal Congress had set earlier this year.

When the committee adjourned more than six hours later, it still had about a dozen measures unresolved, including the difficult issues as capital gains, tax leasing and the cigarette excise tax.

There have so far been few significant departures from the Senate bill. The committee had deleted some minor measures and has made numerous changes in others.

Perhaps the biggest change has involved restaurants. Originally, the Senate Finance Committee had tried to improve the collection of taxes on tips to restaurant employees. The Internal Revenue Service says that tips are one of the sources of income most often not reported to the Government; it estimates that 84 percent of the taxes due on tips are not paid. Debate on Business Meals

But the industry put up such a battle that the Senate deleted that provision. Senator Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, inserted instead a measure to limit the deduction for business meals to half the cost of the meal, an attack on the so-called three-martini lunch. The meals involved are those for business purposes paid for by the company. The committee did not try to eliminate or reduce the deduction for meals of employees traveling away from home.

Early today, the conference committee agreed to preserve the total deduction for business meals and to return to better tax collection on tips.

The measure would require restaurants with more than 10 employees to report their gross income to the I.R.S., as well as making available the charge receipts and tips shown on them. Employees would generally be assumed to earn tips equivalent to 8 percent of the restaurant's income. There would be no change in withholding practices.

Other items approved by the committee last night included these provisions:

- The tripling of the telephone excise tax to 3 percent, from the current level of 1 percent, beginning in 1983 and running for three years. In 1986 and later years, the tax rate would fall to zero, unless Congress again acted. Increased revenues to the Government from this higher tax are expected to amount to nearly $3 billion over three years.

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- The deletion of a proposal by the Senate to allow investors to link the costs of their investments to inflation, which would have reduced the profits they would report and the taxes on their capital gains.

- New limitations on the amounts that top employees in professional corporations may contribute to their pension plans and on loans that individuals could take from their pension plans.

- Increases in the amount of taxes that insurance companies will pay and stricter rules for annuities. A particular target of this bill was the practice by which one insurance company transfers some of its insurance risk to other companies, an action known as reinsurance.

- A slowing in the depreciation available on many properties financed with tax-exempt bonds, and a general reduction in the benefits attached to industrial development bonds. However, amendments to this section would allow the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Brooklyn Union Gas Company to issue taxexempt industrial development bonds.

- An increase in the amount a family may pay to buy a home financed with tax-exempt mortgage subsidy bonds. The committee also agreed that multifamily dwellings and cooperatives could be financed with these mortgage bonds. A lobbyist for New York City said this would enable the city to pursue plans for renovating 5,200 housing units.

While the tax bill includes many more changes in business taxes than in taxes on individuals, the conference committee has approved several provisions that would affect individual taxpayers.

The provision that would probably affect the most people would be the imposition of a 10 percent withholding tax on interest and dividends, with exceptions for the elderly. Ending Insurance Deduction

On the tax deduction for medical expenses, the committee voted to eliminate the deduction for medical insurance premiums, beginning with 1983.

It would also limit deductions for medical expenses to amounts greater than 5 percent of taxable income beginning next year, up from the 3 percent level that currently holds. And in 1984, the separate one percent floor on the cost of prescription drugs would be eliminated, allowing the costs of these drugs and of insulin to be included with other medical expenses.

The committee also approved changes in the individual minimum tax paid by high-income individuals who would otherwise pay relatively little taxes. Under the new provision, incentive stock options would be included in the income base on which the tax is figured. And the minimum tax rate on income subject to this tax would be set at 20 percent.

Individuals would reach that 20 percent rate when their income subject to this tax reached $30,000, while for married couples filing joint returns, the figure would be $40,000. Changes on Casualty Losses

Casualty losses would also be harder to deduct under a Senate provision that was accepted by the committee. To be deductible, these losses would have to exceed 10 percent of income, beginning in 1983. The amount of loss not covered by insurance must exceed $100 to be deductible, as under current law.

In the business sector, the committee voted to repeal a measure in last year's tax bill that would have speeded up the depreciation schedule for corporate investment in plant and equipment. The acceleration would have increased in 1985 and in 1986. Furthermore, the conferees approved a measure that would reduce the amount corporations could depreciate if they also use an investment tax credit.

As the sun rose this morning, nearly 300 lobbyists, tax lawyers, accountants and other interested observers were still packed into the spacious House Ways and Means Committee Room, listening intently to the brief bouts of debate among committee members, and occupying themslves as best they could in the two- and three-hour stretches when the two sides caucused in separate rooms.

As the all-night marathon entered its 18th hour, conferees began to make more and more references to trying to finish quickly. At one point, the audience of several hundred observers cheered and clapped.

This led Senator Russell Long, Democrat of Louisiana, to admonish the assembly, ''We can not have demonstrations of this sort.'' He indicated that the outcry should not be a guide to whether the committee continued its work. It was only minutes later, however, that Senator Dole, the conference chairman, decided to call it a night.

One major item approved this evening was a new set of rules on mergers and acquisitions that were designed to reduce the incentives for corporate takeovers.

Before approval, there were several changes in the effective dates for the new rules, which were designed to protect companies currently involved in such mergers and acquisitions.

Another measure approved this evening was a change in the minimum level for withholding taxes on bank interest from $100 to $150. If finally adopted by both houses, this would mean that a bank would not withhold the 10 percent on interest below $150 a year. The measure would reduce expected increased tax revenues by $86 million over three years.

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A version of this article appears in print on August 15, 1982, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: CONFEREES MOVING CLOSER TO ACCORD ON NEW TAX BILL. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe